1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to power control in general, and in particular to a method for controlling power consumption in a battery-powered electronic device.
2. Description of Related Art
As more and more battery-powered electronic devices appear in the market each year, users also expect those electronic devices to be capable of being continuously powered by batteries for a longer time. Thus, many methods of lengthening the battery usage time for battery-powered electronic devices have been implemented. Most of those methods are accomplished by taking advantage of various power saving functions.
For example, one prior art relies on the determination of whether or not processing can be performed based on the remaining battery capacity and the power consumption. If the processing cannot be performed, a function having the lowest priority is selected as an alternative target function from the functions registered in a limited operation information, and a function using the same constitutional requirements as those of the alternative target function but requiring less power than that of the alternative target function is selected as an alternative function to replace the alternative target function registered in the limited operation information. The priority of the alternative function is also changed to a high value. Another prior art relies on a profile for each application such that power is supplied only to an apparatus according to a user's usage situation.